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The main focus of this thesis is to understand the myriad ways in which crust punk as an expressive cultural form creates meaning, forms the basis for social formation (or music scene), and informs the ways in which its participants both interact with and understand the world around them. Fieldwork for this research was conducted during the summer of 2012 in Austin, Texas. Primary methodology included participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and online ethnography. Additional research data was collected over the last five years through my own personal involvement with the crust punk music scene. The first section examines the ways in which crust punk as a genre both continues to evolve by avoiding and disavowing genre definitions and boundaries. The second section addresses my particular experiences with the Austin, Texas crust punk scene. I separate and examine the differences within the scene among and between differing levels of participation in various scene practices. These practices include the everyday practices necessary to maintain the music scene, as well as “anarchist” practices such as squatting, train hopping, transiency, and refusal to work. In the final section, I argue that in the crust punk scene dystopian performatives enable an apocalyptic and dystopic view of the world, building upon Jill Dolan’s theory of utopian performatives. I also outline my theory on how dystopian performatives and apocalyptic rhetoric work together to inflect crust punk structures of feelings and social imaginaries.

Punk rock music has long been labeled sexist as copious media-generated accounts and reports of the genre concentrate on male artists, hyper-masculine performances, and lyrics considered to be aggressive, sexist, and misogynist. However, scholars have rarely examined punk rock music longitudinally, focusing heavily on 1980s and 1990s manifestations of the genre. Furthermore, few systematic content analyses of feminist themes in punk rock song lyrics have been conducted. The present research is a longitudinal content analysis of lyrics of 600 punk rock songs released for four decades between 1970 and 2009 to examine the prevalence of and longitudinal shifts in antiestablishment themes, the prevalence of and longitudinal shifts in sexist themes relative to feminist themes, the prevalence of and longitudinal shifts in specific feminist branches, and what factors are related to feminism. Using top-rated albums retrieved from Sputnik Music’s “Best Punk Albums” charts, systematic random sampling was applied to select 50 songs for each combination of three gender types and four decades. Sexism and feminism were then operationalized to construct a coding sheet to examine relevant dimensions. While the present study found no significant patterns of longitudinal increase or decrease in feminist or sexist themes, it revealed that feminist themes were consistently high across four decades and, furthermore, indicated a phenomenon of post-modern hybridity.